I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. A new life being born, and metaphysically disentangling from their mother. Gleaming, glittering reactions in my own chakra, as the very force of life flows into me. Dangerous reactions that occur, ad-hoc, and unbidden, as I witnessed what chakra actually does when it flows together to create advanced elemental releases.
All these… memories. Gone, like tears in rain.
"Sir?"
"Hmm?"
Glancing over at the source of the voice, I saw the unfamiliar alien that I'd been saddled with as a transport to the battlescape. Humanoid in appearance, though I'm pretty sure they had significantly different internals to allow for the weird quaver I was hearing from his voice. Captain Nyxis was brave, if nothing else.
They seemed nervous around me if their wide bulbous eyes were to be believed. Most of the staff were, for that matter. Then again, it could be for a lot of reasons. Part of it was the fact that we were going into an active warzone, and while I was sure they were professionals, letting anxiety build was a real thing. It could also be because I'd been staring out the window for the last couple of days in one spot, letting myself catastrophize the worst case scenarios inside of my head.
… Honestly, now that I thought about it, that was probably the reason why someone had come and got me. Seeing your living weapon having a brooding fit was bound to have anyone concerned. "Is something the matter?"
"We're just checking in on you. And… is there something growing on your forehead?"
"Don't worry about it." Truly, out of everything she needed to be concerned about, the stupid amounts of chakra that I was feeding into the seal forming on my forehead wasn't one of them.
"Ah. Then it's normal for your species. Some sort of meditation cycle," the man, I think, said. He looked relieved with the answer.
"Let's go with that."
I didn't have the heart to tell him that there was no such thing going on. But if the Strength of a Hundred seal gave me a good excuse to hide behind, that was fine in my eyes. It was part of the hasty preparations that I was making, outside of something I'd need to be a life-bearing planet to do, like actively using Senjutsu.
"Did I miss anything while I was meditating?" I asked, glancing over at the captain of the vessel.
"No, no," he assured me, waving his hand. "Though I'm mostly checking in to ensure that you're in top shape. We'll be at our destination in a few days."
There were other ships traveling with us, but none as swift as the vessel that I was on. Despite the fact that FTL travel was a thing, crossing enormous distances still involved no small amount of power. Even then, you still ended up spending days to get to your destinations, and weeks if far enough. Considering the fact that you could cross literally intergalactic distances, though, I wasn't going to rag on it that badly.
Truly, portals had spoiled me.
"Then I'll be ready when we arrive. Is there anything I need to know about the forces arrayed against us?" I asked, crossing my arms. "I've been in plenty of fights, but this kind of mass-scale conflict is new to me."
"In an ideal world we'd be able to run you through our existing drills," the captain begrudgingly stated. "But we're not in an ideal world. Just the one the empire allows us."
"With that in mind, things I need to know…?"
The space where his eyebrows might have been furrowed in a very human-like way as he rubbed his hairless chin in thought. "Outside of the rough descriptions of our own naval ships, so that you don't mistake them in space… I would probably emphasize knowing your enemy."
"Presumably, you're referring to anyone who isn't a Viltrumite that's also fighting on their side, right?"
"Very much so! Much of the warfare in Viltrumite expansions isn't actually done by them. Hasn't been in thousands of years. It's chiefly done by their soldiery, usually held in line by hook or by crook." It was impressive how the translator in my skull could transfer hyperspecific human idioms.
"Is there a presumption to go lighter on them because of this…?" If I had to hold back, that was going to make some of my strategies that I intended on immediately doing a little harder.
He shook his head, much to my relief. "Hardly. While it's unfortunate, everyone in this war is fighting for their home and their survival. While we'd like to prevent those casualties, the nature of the battle will preclude that mercy."
"So you guys have gotten used to making the tradeoff. Your lives for theirs."
"It's something every soldier has to get used to. As long as they fight, their families and worlds are left unscathed until the next tithe of meat for their cadres."
There was a very sensible resignation in his voice that almost ached to hear in that moment. Then again, this war had to have made people inured to the worst of it at a certain point. Battle after battle where you knew you were fighting people who didn't quite have their heart in it. But it was either them or you.
And when you got down to brass tacks, most people would choose themselves. It wasn't the wrong impulse to do, really, when the alternative was letting your kin and country be enslaved under the boot of a tyrannical, expansionist empire. That didn't make the moral conundrum any easier to live with.
"I'll have to do my best to come to grips with it as well," I admitted. "And ensure you guys don't have to make those hard choices alone."
If there was a purpose to this new life of mine, it was to help shoulder burdens that were too much for people. Superman, that ephemeral goalpost that I rarely actually measured up to, was so strong that he could save the day without actually having to resort to violence. Or at the very least, find other options.
I wasn't that smart, though, and a lot of my techniques basically boiled down to throwing the kitchen sink at someone. Then prompting putting my foot up their ass and beating them like a rented drum. We all had our own strengths, even if they weren't always what we'd wish for.
"If the Wise Thaddeus thinks you can help, I'll believe him." He didn't say it like it was a question. The captain said it like it was a given, as if he were describing the color of the sky or an objective fact of the world.
Thaddeus said that I could help, so I must be capable of it."
"You guys have a lot of faith in him."
"Until he came to the Coalition of Planets, thousands of years ago, we were barely more than a few ramshackle states struggling to hold our own against the full might of the Viltrumite Imperium," the alien explained. "In that time, he managed to aid us through the technology shared, his wisdom, and his decisive strength of will."
Hmm. I didn't know how much of that decisive strength was very literal or metaphorical. Regardless of the specifics, it was clear that Thaddeus was seen as a pillar of Coalition values. Or at the very least, respected enough to have been leading their society for literal thousands of years. Even against only relatively few Viltrumites for most of it, that didn't make it any less clear that there he had the chops for the job.
If there was something worrying, it was perhaps how high of esteem they held him to. Then again, hero worship wasn't unfair if the person lived up to the hype. In this I could say he earned the benefit of the doubt.
"Then I'll be sure not to let the faith he has in me down," I admitted. "For now, I've got a few more preparations I need to attend to before we reach the front."
"Don't let me stop you," the captain readily agreed as I walked back to my hardly used chambers that I'd been given.
The last bit of detail work on the seal planted against my skull needed to be completed. It was a fiddly bit of work and perhaps not as fine as Tsunade's own genius, as I was inventing things from first principles. But I suspected it'd get the job done for the purposes I needed it for.
Besides, the free time to myself would allow me to steel my mind and work out the rest of the nervous jitters in me. As absurd as it might have been to have them, the psyche wasn't always so easy to contend with. I'd done everything I could to prepare for the inevitable confrontation that I was always going to have with Viltrumites.
It was now time to see if I'd done enough.
Science fiction video games and movies had spoiled me a little on what I assumed a normal war in space would look like. I thought there'd be big, booming explosions and bombastic battles, but when we entered the battlefield in the black over the planet, everything was quiet. These weren't inexperienced, novice crewmen, but veterans in their own right.
They had a job to do, and they knew how to do it well. Or at least the faith in their fellow crewmates that they'd manage things well enough. While my sight wasn't so large as to cover actual light-years, the sensory suite of the bridge was effective for the purposes of taking in all of the telemetry data the ship was pulling.
Targeting solutions, estimations of how the warfare was going, and communication channels with allied ships. All of it flooded into me as I tried to get a handle on how things were going on the strategic side of things. The good news was that the Viltrumites had not taken to the field, apparently even despite how their ground forces were being torn apart.
The bad news was who was doing the tearing apart. Thokk was on the field but bored and only making perfunctory, short appearances to keep the actual defenders from being overrun. I was fairly sure he was doing this to try and bait out worthy attackers, but so far none had actually arrived. He must not have been a high priority for the Viltrumites to kill.
Not yet, anyway.
Regardless, we appeared right in the middle of a battle. It was, for lack of a better word, messy. I'd thought that I'd seen messy situations with the Flaxan invasions or Omnipotus' efforts to conquer the Earth, but those were chump change in comparison to everything that I was seeing now. When two galactic civilizations brushed against each other with differences that couldn't be settled with diplomacy…
The stars would inevitably burn. I sucked in a breath and glanced over at the captain. "I'll be making my entrance. Any suggestions as to where I should start?"
"If you're void capable and think you can make a difference in the fleet battle—"
"I can," I interjected.
"Then you should begin on this quadrant of the enemy fleet," he explained, pointing to a point of the projected hologram that showed the composition of our adversaries. "It'd relieve pressure on our allied forces. We didn't expect to be coming in so hot, but…"
"It's fine," I assured him, cracking my neck. "Where do you think the Viltrumites are?"
"Likely the flagship," he answered, swallowing thickly. "Are… are you headed straight there?"
"No. I'm going to warm up a bit with a few ships and see if I can draw them away from the rest of the battle." It'd keep the most unmanageable, dangerous elements away from the conflict as a whole. If I could draw them toward the planet, being capable of life, I could probably stall for a little or dispatch a clone to go gather natural energy so that I could properly get some senjutsu cooking.
And if I were in sage mode, a lot of this clusterfuck would become considerably easier to deal with. If, maybe, perhaps, were the words that so much of this was contingent on. But I'd made my bed and claimed to be able to do these things. No point in trying to back out now.
"Then godspeed, Genji."
I cracked a grin at him. "Thank you, captain. I'll see you when the battle is over."
Without any real expenditure of will, I was moving through a sudden portal, and the next I was in the void. Going from the presence of an atmosphere to the complete absence of one, the vacuum of space pressing all around me, and silence reigning once more as I looked out at the battle. My first enemy was naturally the one I always tended to confront first, choice paralysis.
There were a lot of fancy things that I could do, jutsu I could pull out that might work in the void of space, things of that nature. They would have just been extraneous, however, as opposed to the simplest and easiest means of bringing things to a close. Sometimes, you just had to move to the most straightforward option at your disposal, no matter how messy it might be.
One moment I was hanging in the void of space. The next, I was going an appreciable percentage of FTL, a white streak in the void as I impacted one of the vessels that was firing on the Coalition forces. A living battering ram, not the most elegant of solutions, but the chakra expenditure was manageable, as I hit the first ship in the midsection and went straight through.
Like a hot knife through butter, there wasn't any resistance worth mentioning. All I had to do was keep going, keep pushing, as I saw and felt countless lives snuffed out in a moment. There was no satisfaction in me at the action, outside of the cold acknowledgement of the efficiency of it. The moment that I was through the other side, the ship lasted for a few moments.
Then, with an almost audible creak that I entirely imagined, it no longer could hold that structural integrity. It broke, or something in the reactor or power systems did, as light bloomed briefly in the darkness of space. In its wake the vessel was breaking apart into two separate shapes, while the sight of a scant few escape powers was shooting out. What had to be a very small fraction of the actual crew complement's population.
It was war, though, and compared to the gorey way I'd dispatched the Flaxxans before, it was a lot easier to put out of my mind. I didn't like what I was going to have to do to save lives and end this battle. But I wasn't going to quibble over the morality of it, if my actions could bring things to a close.
Speeding up, I zoomed at my next target and let myself sink into the role of living torpedo.
One, two, three, four, five…
Thousands of sapients died in the first couple of minutes, while lasers and weapon systems were turned my way. Or at least they made the attempt, but those big, lumbering shape-based weapons were made for targets much larger than my own humanoid silhouette in the black. Trying to shoot me down was the last thing some of them accomplished before winking out of existence.
Not that I was able to do this unmolested. Coming toward the flagship, it seemed as if there were figures departing it to stop me. Three of them, who looked so human that it almost took me aback before my mind understood what I was looking at. Viltrumites.
I might have been willing to try and explain away Nolan as a particularly human-looking member of their species, but no. Their baseline seemed almost entirely like a human, if dressed in white and gray outfits, with expressions of anger and determination on their faces as they moved toward me.
One was a ginger with some sort of goggles strapped onto his face, while the others were mostly sharing the same fair skin and black hair. If there was a commonality between all of them, it was the fact that they seemed to largely share the same kind of style in moustaches. Nolan had said it was the thingfor Viltrumite men to wear, but that didn't make it any less silly to my sensibilities.
A bunch of authoritarian assholes with porn-staches were trying to conquer the universe, and they'd gone and made it my problem. What was my life?
"You dare!" The one in the lead spoke, telepathically blaring in my mind, and it was all I could do to not merely just laugh in his face. It didn't help that he looked the youngest out of the bunch, like some guy in his mid-twenties, albeit absolutely ripped.
And frankly, I failed, letting out my own silent laugh. The gesture only seemed to make the hovering three figures all the more offended. "What? Is the young master offended?"
"What?"
"As much as I'd like to shake you three down for information, I've got a battle to win," I shrugged. "Any chance we could have you and your forces depart?"
It was the ginger who crossed his arms as he sneered over at me. "Why would we? Your forces will be defenseless after we tear you apart."
"Mm. Unfortunate that talks have broken down." I answered, not feeling particularly sad about the matter. "Allow me to retort."
Chakra didn't flow my own reserves for this next attack. It came from the seal on my forehead, as I burst forward, taking the middle, ginger Viltrumite by sheer surprise. I was going fast, faster than I was fairly sure I'd ever gone before when I wasn't using the Eight Gates or senjutsu, but even so…
Was this guy so weak or slow that he couldn't react in time? That was the thought that hovered in my mind, though I chalked it up to me catching him mostly by surprise with my initial blitz. Something he was hastily trying to rectify, as I held him by the shoulders and we entered the atmosphere of the planet below.
While his allies were attempting to catch up, the bespectacled Viltrumite had other things in mind. Like trying to bludgeon me or wrest himself free of my iron grip. "Let go of me, you misbegotten wretch!"
"No points for using your vocab words!" I exclaimed, laughing in his head as we went burning through the atmosphere like two rocks. Neither of us took damage on the way down, but thankfully, I did have something to actually hit him with.
The very ground itself, as we landed, a solid distance away from any major inhabited areas. That didn't stop our impact from creating a crater and a massive plume of dust, as the two of us hit it like meteors. Him taking the brunt of the damage, as I stopped myself at the very last second.
Trees, with orange bark and odd, blue-colored foliage, went flying, as well as mounds of dirt and no small amount of unfortunate animal life, vaporized on impact. It was a sacrifice that I was willing to make, though, as we were in precisely the kind of ideal environment for me to garner senjutsu. I just had to buy a little time; at least in the minute or so I had until the other two Viltrumites caught up.
That'd be more than enough for what I had planned.
"You're not bad!" I commented, hovering in the air as the Viltrumite rapidly got to his feet. "But I think you've got a few things twisted, champ. You're the challengers here."
"A lucky blow," he grunted, looking profound angry, as he hovered up. "But you'll find that your luck runs out here."
"Will it? Then prove it to me."
He didn't hesitate to rush toward me with a roar, wind and dust kicked up by the Viltrumite propulsion that pushed him through the air. With a fist cocked back and ready to be thrown, for a brief moment I could recognize some elements of the shared 'style,' as it were, he had in common with Nolan. Though there was something else that was bothering me in that moment, as he grew closer and closer.
As he threw the fist, I didn't move. Instead, I merely slid smoothly into position and caught the fist with one hand. There was a lot of power behind the strike… but not so much that I couldn't overpower the man who was trying to hit me. I got to enjoy that brief look of shock on his face, as I was personally no less surprised.
"What?"
He didn't get a second to pull himself back or try to wrench himself free. Instead, I slammed my free fist into his face and pulsed chakra into the blow, blasting it inside of him. The blow itself sent the man flying, carving furrows through the forest that we were in as wood and dirt went flying.
Hitting his body, I could marvel at how dense it felt beneath my blows. Yet at the same time, as I followed after him…
All I could do is feel a profound sense of confusion wash over me in that moment. I wasn't the only one shocked, as the Viltrumite looked up at me, spitting out blood, with wide eyes that weren't showing off the same arrogance anymore. Not with his glasses fractured, and his body genuinely wounded, if not to the utmost degree that I could have.
He got to his feet rapidly enough, though, aided by his flight. "What are you?"
"I…" I trailed off, blinking down at the alien, with my thoughts racing a million miles a minute. "I thought you were stronger."
"Strong enough to slay you!" He roared, pride pricked in that moment, as he rushed toward me with a blur of motion. Or something that might have been fast, if it wasn't for the fact he just categorically wasn't Nolan.
I'd been overestimating these guys all of this time. All of this training, these efforts, the hours I'd spent trying to grow faster and stronger, hone my chakra reserves, and work myself up into a lather. When the reality of the situation had been sitting there, plain as day, all of this time.
Nolan had said it himself. He was, by the standards of his race, exceptional. It was like how even for Kryptonians, Superman was bullshit, to the point where even the gods of Krypton had mistaken him for the head of their pantheon at one point. This was what your average, typical Viltrumite was capable of.
For most people, I could see how that was a frightening proposition. Easily someone who could cull a planet, wipe out fleets, or whatever. For me…
For me, this was a very manageable threat all of a sudden.
"Let's hammer in the difference between you and me, hmm?" I grinned, and it wasn't a friendly one. All my anxiety and fear was bubbling to the surface, now that I actually had a wonderful target to vent it on.
I'd been reticent to head into space at first. Now I couldn't imagine why I'd ever put it off to begin with.
Instead of clashing, like my opponent would have liked us to, I instead molded dust release jutsu on the fly, feeling my bloodlust rise with each passing second. As he approached, I let it go from between my fingers, feeling a sense of immense satisfaction sweeping over me. Especially when it hit him, and I got to see what happened when I was fighting someone who wasn't as tough as Nolan.
It wasn't lethal. I'd like to establish that right off the bat, as the Viltrumite flew right into the geometric shape that I'd conjured, which rapidly expanded and captured him within it. But I wasn't willing to call the end result fun, either, as the molecular destruction did its dirty work.
In my past life, a movie I'd watched before was a few of the Hellraiser films. Outside of the first movie, I'd like to say with confidence that the rest weren't particularly good. However, they were fine enough if you wanted some horror movie slop to go through. Why they came to mind in that moment, was that the sight before me felt like something that could have come straight out of one of those films.
I'd never seen a flayed man before, but I hadseen Nolan's flayed arm when just the edge of the technique had caught him. Bloody, messy, sinew exposed to the open air, as his outfit was torn asunder and destabilized on the molecular level. That was what happened to the bespectacled Viltrumite, though over his entire body, rather than just one limb.
The sight was like something out of a splatterpunk film.
While the jutsu itself required no small amount of concentration and far more chakra than normally required, I had an ocean to throw around. Which was why I held reservations that it'd do that much damage. Apparently not, as my foe's flesh was stripped universally, hair gone, and only his eyes saved by the dint of his eyelids being closed. That didn't mean the sheer, unrelenting scream of agony that spilled forth wasn't a little haunting.
"AAAAGH!"
Well. I called it the Geneva Checklist for a reason. These techniques weren't meant to be nice.
By this point, the other two Viltrumites had arrived, seeing their floating compatriot in a condition that could best be summarized as a living hell of my own creation. "VIDOR!" One yelled.
The other looked at me with rage in his eyes. "You abomination! In the name of Viltrum, be purged!"
"You can try!" I laughed, and something violent and sadistic left my throat as all three of them came into action.
To the flayed Viltrumite's credit, Vidor, the fact that he was nude and missing the upper layer of his dermis didn't stop him from trying to close the distance with me again. Despite the insane amounts of pain my Byakugan was reading from him, he seemed rather insistent on beating me to death, throwing violent, haymaker thrusts and kicks more like a wild animal than anything else.
I dodged them all. Weaved past strikes that came within a hair-thin length of actually hitting me, as I felt that malicious, alien part of me bubble to the surface. The exchange was quick, a blur faster than the human eye could see, before I planted a hand against his chest and spun up some of the other elemental releases I'd been trying out. Lava release wasn't pretty or fun when you weren't missing skin. With it…
Vidor proved a little too distracted to stop my dao of hot rock from cooking him alive slowly, while I quickly turned to face the other two Viltrumites.
They were smart enough not to face me head on. It was the objectively correct move, especially seeing what I'd done to their compatriot. One went to the right, the other to the left, as they attempted to try and come at me from either side. Unfortunately, neither of them was aware that my vision stretched quite a ways in every direction.
Or that I was more than happy to lure them in with a false sense of security, right before I struck. Hanging in the air, they came at me, and then I proceeded to portal the two of them when I ducked out of the way. The portals in question dumped both of them before me, disoriented and confused, as I scanned their bodies for rough pressure points, and then began to strike.
The Gentle Fist, or other derivatives, was mostly meant for fighting those with chakra. However, the actual capacity to deal some degree of internal damage, especially when you were punching at my level of strength and accuracy, couldn't be overstated. It was interesting to see their bodies bulge from my blows, being blasted back and spitting up blood from the sudden strikes.
"Hmm. It needs a little adjustment to get past your innate atomic make-up, but this isn't bad! Thank you for volunteering your services as test dummies."
Spitting up blood, one of them glared at me, hate evident in their eyes. "Y-You think this much is enough to defeat a…hrrk…g-glorious Viltrumite… w-warriors… like ourselves?"
"Of course not!" I assured them. "But it's good for me to get my practice in while I still can. You're an endangered species, so I'll only get so many chances to try this out."
As in fifty, tops. I'd never really indulged in sadism before, but just this once, I could see the appeal.
It was almost like I was forgetting something, wrapped up in the thrill of combat. An important factoid, I was sure, but apparently not so important that it was sticking out in my head. Or so I thought, until I noticed that there was another white figure charging forward toward our location. One that was rampaging toward my location with quickness, as I saw a familiar and bone-chilling visage on the warpath.
Ah. Either Thokk got whiff of where the Viltrumites were fighting, or someone quite logically told him to go back up the Coalition's ally. It was the logical action for anyone to take, albeit they likely had not been informed of whatever animosity he likely would hold for me.
… Three Viltrumites were a surmountable threat in my eyes. Three Viltrumites plus the Battle Beast was a different scenario entirely. Especially when he entered the fray and saw me. I saw it in his eyes, in the way his bloodthirsty posture had something new and furious entering it, as those predatory eyes locked my way.
Mm. He wasn't slowing down, in fact, I was pretty sure he was speeding up? I didn't actually know he could go that fast. Perhaps he could be talked down?
"Thokk! My apologies for the last time we met, but—" Nope, he was coming at me even faster now! Good lord, what were they feeding this fucking Dornian?!
"YOU! MY TRAITOROUS FOE!"
Whatever belated apology I was going to give Thokk was cut off when a mace hit me into the nearest Viltrumite.
When I next saw Allen, I was going to punt him into the nearest star.
Vidor had only just managed to get himself back into the fray, charging at me. Not that he likely intended to get up close and personal with me like this, as the two of us were blown away. For a brief second, we could share some sympathy for our misery and pain. If only by the sheer force of the blow that made me exhale and wince, from the throbbing ache spreading through my chest.
If I needed any more confirmation that Thokk had been holding back before, the wild power in his swing had put paid to that theory. In some respects it was almost comforting that I'd gauged him correctly, as opposed to the Viltrumites, who my own fear had been blinding me to. These guys were not as strong as Nolan. They weren't anywhere near as powerful as I'd been fearing, honestly. What they were, however, were annoyances, and likely on some level, they recognized that they weren't built for this.
At least, that was my guess. The fact that they'd kept on coming, despite the fact that neither of them were doing well against me, let alone with Thokk now in the mix… I could respect their drive to get the job done.
"NOT THE TIME TO SETTLE THIS, THOKK!" I yelled, dodging out of the way of the next blow as the dazed Vidor took the mace swing meant for me in my stead.
Sending him sprawling off into the distance, likely with something broken if the awkward way his arm was bent was any indication, Thokk turned to face me with a snarl on his face. Stalking along the ground, he didn't even seem to care there were two Viltrumites flying right for him.
"You promised honorable combat, only to foreswear your own word!" He growled, both hands squeezing the grip of his mace.
"Because you're a goddamn maniac, and it's the only way I could stop you!" I yelled back, before realizing that probably wasn't what he wished to hear. "Listen, I'm happy with it, but—"
I started, only for him to rush me again, practically chasing me further across the wilderness. It must have been a comical display, from the outside looking in. Him chasing me, the Viltrumites trying to keep up, and me attempting to balance out the insanity of the situation… somehow.
It was time to start breaking out some of the trump cards that he'd been holding back. Not just drawing more chakra from the Strength of a Hundred seal, but the other things I'd been hiding in my sleeves.
"First and Second Gates," I murmured, as adversaries came from all sides. "Open."
Just like that, power flooded my body. It was almost addictive, though the thing that kept me from getting too enamored with the process was the fact that I could actively see myself being torn apart at the same time. Fortunately, I had a flood of chakra to regenerate myself with… but that wasn't going to last forever.
First up was getting rid of the Viltrumite that I'd already injured the most. Vidor, poor Vidor, was a real trooper. Truly, someone that their empire should have considered a credit to their misbegotten name. That didn't stop me from disappearing from the side as I portaled myself next to him, driving my knee into his skull from a sideways angle.
The crack of his skull was palpable beneath my blow, as he went flying, his compatriots twisting around to face me. Not to their credit, though, as they found themselves having to be knocked out of the way by Thokk's mace. With an almost contemptuous swing of his weapon, their bodies were bludgeoned, as he tried to continue getting at me.
With his monstrous strength, it was almost like they were just obstacles in the pursuit of his maddened anger. However, they were punching, striking, and slowing him down. Enough so that I could deal with Vidor at my leisure.
Fun for me, less so for the former ginger, before I'd abraded his entire body.
Dust release came to me again as I flew after Vidor, yet this time I was condensing things to a fever point. The molded chakra between my hands was violent, almost to the point of destabilizing, as I focused more on containment and a very small, devastating dodecahedron of pure annihilation.
Compared to what I'd need for a human, the extra potency was required, though that didn't mean it was easy. Maintaining my flight, awareness of everyone's position, flooding my body at all times with medicinal chakra to heal myself, and then elemental release on top of it with three different elements…
It was a lot to balance. That didn't mean I wasn't finding myself exhilarated, as my limits were pushed to their utmost, and I flew overtop the stunned Viltrumite. His eyes widened at my approach, but real horror came out when he saw what was between my digits. After being flayed the first time, I didn't think he was going to forget about it anytime soon.
So he tried to do the thing that everyone told me that Viltrumites didn't do. He tried to run, or, er, fly away from me, spinning around, as if he were going to escape. The sight of it drew a laugh from me, as I poured on chakra into my flight, the tight airstream I left in my wake sending me hurtling through the atmosphere.
"There's no running this time!" Something tight in my chest was unclenching every time I toyed with him like this. That fear that Nolan had placed in me, coming steadily undone. "Here's your gold star for trying!"
"No-!" He started and didn't get the chance to finish. Not before the jutsu slammed into his face.
It was encapsulated and then promptly under the effects of dust release, shredded into oblivion. There wasn't any blood, any gore, just the face that one moment Vidor's head was there, and the next the vast amount of chakra I'd put into the working broke it down. Every molecular binding that kept his atoms stable, being sliced and divided, as from the neck up, it just…
I guess the best way to describe it would be a mist, but that implied there was any colored mess left in its wake. I'd likely breathed in the atoms that made up his skull, as the headless, red body twitched and promptly began to fall from the sky. So ended a Viltrumite, costing…
Considering the stunt I'd done with the ships and the fighting we'd done so far, I'd put my reserves at around seventy-five percent. That wasn't that bad! I still had two more to deal with and likely might need to find more elegant solutions. Compared to how utterly drained I'd been dealing with Nolan, this was a vast improvement!
Speaking of the other two Viltrumites and Thokk, he was still trying to get at me, and so were they, but they were also kind of inhibiting each other at the same time. Since he hit hard enough to be noticed, and they hit hard enough to prod that weird little trigger of his. So it was kind of a free for all as they fought mostly at ground level, the concussive waves of force from their clashes destroying the terrain beneath them.
In an ideal world, I would teleport away and let them sort this out by themselves. Unfortunately, I did owe Thokk a little, despite him being a goddamn maniac, and couldn't let these Viltrumites run around with free reign to go mess with my other forces. Thankfully, I was more than happy to let them go at it for one last minute so I could concentrate on other matters.
Like, say, gathering natural energy.
Taking a page out of Naruto's book, I had some clones help with the process, splitting my reserves further but helping me bring senjutsu properly to the fore as I let the transformation overtake me. Bit by bit, as I grew into a more feral version of Ōtsutsuki, like I'd observed back on Earth.
Sucking in a breath, it felt rich, even more so considering the two gates still open bolstering my chakra flow. I felt, despite how much I knew I couldn't keep the state up, a little like a god. Some natural, divine being filled with righteous power. Not for the first time, I was able to understand how the Ōtsutsuki maintained such a singular sense of supremacy when they all had this instinctive ease with chakra.
As much as I'd been afraid of embracing my heritage, there were some benefits to doing so. Especially when it came to dealing with threats decisively, as I eyed my bloodied foes. If there was ever a time to jump in, it'd be now.
With a thought, I made a portal and entered the fray.
Thokk was in the middle of clobbering one of them with his mace, bludgeoning their faces, while the other was behind him, trying to choke the lion-man out. I came in with the steel chair, or more accurately, a sword of ice that was colder than science should have allowed for. Then I promptly drove it through his chest.
The thing people mistook about chakra was like trying to establish some scientific basis for it. I could create matter from nothing, yet somehow, the eggheads at the GDA were saying that my ice shouldn't be able to meaningfully freeze things that could withstand the void of space. They were right.
But chakra was bullshit. It was hopes and dreams; it was the secret formula they put in the mixture to make the Powerpuff Girls, all that bullshit that didn't make any sense on a scientific level. If you were strong enough, if you had enough chakra, if you could throw enough at the problem with enough chakra control…
Well, reality could prove exceedingly malleable.
My reality was stronger than this asshole's. I said, internally, my ice should be able to make a sword that cuts through him, and you know what? Hyoton managed it, whether that be being such an absurdly low temperature that should have caused actual cosmic, planetary-wide devastation, as I carved through his flesh. Or maybe just because my own will was helping the matter along.
It didn't matter. That was the trick about being an Ōtsutsuki, I realized. Whether or not you were strong enough to impose your will on the world was the only thing that mattered.
So it went through him, and he gagged, dropping Thokk and falling to the ground, as ice crystals began to form in his blood. Maybe it was the senjutsu, or my gates being open, that pushed me to these limits. All I knew was that my eyes felt fucking weird in that moment, when everything came together and I conceptualized some greater truth of the world.
I'd learned my lesson about giving my enemies a moment to do something clever or recover. The Viltrumite I'd stabbed was hurt, and I pounced on him, bludgeoned him with a flurry of blows that he tried to defend against with inept parries and dodges. It didn't help he still had a sword sticking through his chest, slowing him down as rime began to sprout from his flesh. Then ice, as his breathing became labored, bit by bit.
I beat him until he was in the ground, a crater, unmoving and, to my senses, not even breathing, frozen from the inside out. There were two ways, I'd found, to properly take out a Viltrumite. The head, or the internals. Anything else, and they'd keep going.
It was good intel to have, though as Thokk finished up his own fight with a bloody bite to the throat of the Viltrumite, I wasn't going to be able to enjoy my victory for long. The Viltrumite in question was dropping, hands gripping their throat as their lifeblood left them, and their spine was crushed. Distantly familiar to how big cats actually took out their prey back on Earth.
Enjoying the brief reprieve wasn't going to last for too long, though. Not when he was already twisting toward me to close the distance between us once again, big, bounding leaps that were faster than any land-based mammal should be able to move.
Even in the throes of his blood-frenzy, he too had learned lessons. Specifically against giving me any time to cook up my bullshit. I'd be impressed if I wasn't also distantly aware I had a few minutes of optimal operation left, between all of my buffs.
Welp.
Maximum effort time.
With a heavy mace coming my way, I was ready for his blows, having taken in so much of his singularly aggressive style by this point. It was instinct, the way that I immediately created a portal above myself and then moved it down. Where my midsection was meant to be struck, instead the mace whizzed right through empty air as my legs remained in place.
Just so my torso could appear behind Thokk and strike with all of my strength. I tried hard not to think about how I was technically bisected at this moment or how profoundly disorienting it was to be splintered like this. Thankfully, the Battle Beast himself obviously hadn't been expecting it either.
"THE FIGHT'S OVER!" I yelled, as he went skidding like a river stone against the broken earth. Punching a fist into the dirt, he stopped, eyes like glowing coals through the dust plumes still drifting from our clash.
"IT'S OVER WHEN I'M DEAD!" He roared back and crossed the distance again, some furious animus keeping him going.
I could fly away, portal away, whatever, but this would be just kicking the rock down the road for another time. Ending him, however, was removing a… 'ally' for the Coalition of Planets, though. Which meant that I needed to find a way to thread the needle here.
Wetting my lips, I gave him a shaky grin, breathed in, and moved to meet him.
The thing people don't tell you about a fight of almost tentative equals is how it felt to actually be challenged. Perhaps I had some bug in my brain, some defect indicative of my species, but it felt good when I took a mace to the ribs and exquisite when I uppercut the man, sending him flying into the sky.
Like there were still mountains that I needed to conquer before I could call myself the strongest organism in truth. Flying up after him, I sent a barrage of jutsu, fire, ice, smaller dust release that I could manage, and more besides. Anything that could bludgeon and batter him in that moment.
Which gave me the surprise that I needed once more as he slammed a hand on his gauntlet and disappeared. I blinked, mostly in surprise, a little bit of shock, and then complete, unhinged delight, as he teleported next to me.
So this is what it feels like…
Forcing him to adapt to the fight, to my own style, and being subjected to a trick I loved putting on other people. With pearly whites exposed, I took the swing of his mace to my face in stride, some of my teeth flying with the motion. He'd earned that strike, dodging out of the way of what should have been enough to knock him into the atmosphere.
We fell like two meteors, bruised, bloodied, and battered, as I got to my feet in time to defend myself from a three-piece combo. One swing, a rake of his claws, and then a bite that managed to land on my forearm. It was fine, though, seeing as I merely flooded it with ice and threatened to fill his mouth and throat with it, forcing him to pull back or have his internals frozen as well.
I won't lie. Time got away from me.
It was a blur of violence and combat, as the main war above and beyond had been forgotten. I felt bones break, organs bruise, and my body pushed to its utmost limits as we just went to blows, doing our best to thrash each other…
At least until I pulled back and hovered in the sky, trying to pull myself out of the frenzied spiral that I'd fallen into. Thokk attempted to follow, right up until I made a wide band of portals around me, blocking off his gleeful advance. "Time-out!"
"... WHAT?!"
"I'm callin' time-out, man!" I yelled at him. "There's still a war going on!"
"I demand satisfaction, and you hide behind the pretense of being a soldier?" He yelled, looking genuinely surprised, baffled, and so confused.
"A little bit? Like, I came here to help out the Coalition of Planets, not have another fight with you."
Escaping him was a low growl. "How fortunate for you…"
"Yeah, well, I came here to help and fight Viltrumites, not you. Feel some type of way about it if you like, but it's the truth." The fact that my reserves were around 45% was beside the point.
"You cannot leave it like this," Thokk spoke, almost with a hint of outright whine in his voice. "I refuse to allow it!"
Rubbing my chin, I tracked him with my eyes as he stalked back and forth, trying to look for a way to continue the fight. I, of course, wasn't keen to let him, even if the portals did cost more than I'd like to keep up. "... How about a compromise?"
"Another one of your ragged deals?"
"Sort of. While the Viltrumites are still a threat, I genuinely cannot afford to fight you. But once the empire is gone…"
"Once their threat is removed, you'd have the free rein to battle…" He trailed off, licking his lips, as he eyed me like a steak. Not even sexually, but the same way you'd look at a good meal before you.
It was all I could do not to shiver on the spot. I'd never wanted to be looked at that way, and frankly, I'd prefer nobody looked at me that way again.
"So how does that sound? Are we good?" I asked, looking at him carefully, feeling myself still tender from the blows that I'd taken. Honestly, my own erstwhile 'ally' was more harmful to me than the Viltrumites were. "Because if we have to fight again, I'm skipping straight to teleporting you into space."
Those dangerous, leonine eyes of his watched me carefully, teeth bared in my direction. "... We are, as you say, good. But when all of this is said and done, we will be settling that score you owe me, Genji of Earth. Or there will be consequences. Not just for you, but for your planet."
"Do we have an accord?"
I sighed. Thokk was an insane, battle-hungry berserker, but he was also one of the most potent fighters in space. Actually putting in the effort to killing him, at least until the wider conflict with the Viltrumite empire was over, was just a bad idea. Not when we still needed his overpowering aggression and might to win the day. That didn't mean I liked agreeing to the bargain.
It felt like making a deal with the devil. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Eventually, this debt would come due if he didn't end up getting killed first by someone else.
"We've got a deal," I nodded, swallowing thickly. "A proper fight. With all the new tricks that I've got up my sleeves."
"Good. And if you prove dishonorable, I'll treat you accordingly as well."
"Meaning…?"
He didn't respond, giving me a look that promised nothing good to anyone or anywhere I cared about. Unfortunately, my first, knee-jerk reaction was killing him, which again couldn't be done. With a grunt, he turned, beginning to make great, leaping bounds away, back toward whatever passed for the frontlines of the ground battle.
Leaving me with three mostly intact Viltrumite corpses.
… It'd be a sin to waste them, wouldn't it? Nobody would care if I just did a little bit of clean-up, would they? Sinclair was about to get a precious new gift, and it was an enormous amount of work cut out for him. I, meanwhile, wanted to go take a rest, replenish my chakra, and think about how I was going to cuss out Allen.
The day had been long, and frankly, I thought I'd earned looting rights for all of the nonsense that I'd been through.